Rain, not-so-bargainy bargains, and the ballet

Local time: Tuesday 15 September 9:25am

Yep I'm blogging early this morning! That's because I've been out since 7.45 this morning to go to Santa Maria della Grazie, an old convent from the 13th Century and the home to Leonardo's Last Supper. Because of the rapidly deteriorating state of the mural, you must book to see it, and only 25 people are allowed in ever 15 minutes. Normally tickets for the Last Supper book out at least two weeks in advance, but I found out last week that due to a fault in the booking system, tickets were not available for pre-booking and you just had to turn up at 8am and hope for the best. Arrived at 8.15 because I got lost in the Metro station trying to switch trains, and I was one of the last people to get a ticket - I'm going at 3.15 today. Very excited!!

As promised, a couple of photos from when Laura and I went up to the roof of the Duomo on Sunday afternoon. It was much nicer than the last time I went up since it wasn't right at midday!!
And this is a photo just for Anna (has she gone yet? Was that today?). These cars are everywhere... Honda Pandas. You should get one I think.
Okay so this is the story of what I did yesterday: I went out at about midday to find a couple of outlet shops I'd heard about... apparantly they held all the famous brands: Prada, Gucci, D&G etc but at 50 - 80% off the normal retail price. Which is still much more than 100 euros a pice but I thought I'd go along and try and hunt myself out a bargain. Well the first thing I thought as I stepped out the front door was that it was cold. And compared with the opressive heat of the past week, that was quite a nice surprise. Until it started raining. And clearly, in Milan, when it rains, it pours! I arrived at the first shop, Il Salvagente absolutely soaking and feeling distinctly like I'd taken a swim in all my clothes. (The shop was about half an hours walk from home base, so I would have taken the metro but it seemed such a nice day for walking!) And the place was closed. That's right folks, I'd forgotton that on Monday mornings shopkeepers sleep in and shops don't open till three in the afternoon. The other place, Vestistock, was on the way to the nearest metro station so I went there for a quick look, and though it was open it was just the stuff that no one else wants and still at about 10 times the price I'd normally pay for clothes. I decided to go home, dry off and try again for Il Salvagente. There was a heap of choice, but have you ever been to Savemart? Well it's like that, you just need to trawl through everything and hope you'll come across something half decent. By that stage I wasn't really in that kind of mood. But I did manage to pick up some super cheap shoes from a little market stall on the way home. So that made me feel better about the whole thing.

This is me dressed up for the ballet. And no, I definitely wasn't overdressed! Everyone was 'dressed to the nines', and I'd actually read somewhere that 'gentlemen are requested to wear a shirt and tie' or something to that effect.
The ballet was amazing, the only thing was I kept wanting to jump up on stage and force-feed the lead ballerina. Ugly-skinny. Eugh.
I was sitting in the third row back in the stalls (in Italy the 'Platea') as all of the good box seats were gone by the time I got my ticket, but it was a good one with a very good view, and although I couldn't see the actual orchestra in the pit, I could see the conducter close-up (he must have been standing on a very high podium). It was 96.80 euros, just over NZ$200, but absolutely worth for the chance to see the La Scala ballet.

I'll let you know how the Last Supper is.